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Thursday, 26 March 2015

70. Synchronised Swimming - Duet

Event: Synchronised Swimming - DuetDate: 28th February 2015Location: Clacton Synchro Club, Clacton Leisure Centre Cost: £4 per session (for 7 sessions) Rules: Synchronised swimming is one of the three disciplines in which only women compete. The sport tests strength, flexibility, grace, artistry and long underwater endurance. Competitions consist of a technical routine and a free routine. The technical routine sees swimmers perform specific moves with a time limit of 2:20. The free routine has no restrictions on the moves or music, and has a time limit of 3:20. The results of the two routines are combined to produce a final score. The Event:

Sarah: We kicked off 2015 by setting aside our Saturday mornings for 6.30am alarms and swimming lengths by 7.30am. After a week at work, it wasn't the easiest thing to do, and the night before was usually spent texting each other how much we didn't want to do it. However, as we've been finding throughout the challenge, as soon as we got to the pool, it was all worth it. And afterwards we felt amazing! We were under no misconceptions about how hard synchronised swimming would be, but I definitely hadn't been expecting it to be as much fun as it is. We learnt a host of moves over our weeks with the club, including: back, front and side lay-out, knee-rise, dolphin, torpedo, Isle-of-Man, back somersault and oyster. The routine we put together was far more advanced than either of us had expected at the start, though we did struggle with the synchronised element of the sport. Maybe we've made up a new event with 'similar swimming'.

Ellie: Similar Swimming, ha! Yes, looking back at these videos that is definitely what I am doing. I think my memory for routines is very much hindered by the early mornings. Synchronised swimming is definitely a sport that I would try again after we finish our challenge. We really have been on a journey with Clacton Synchro Club. We've had sessions at the start of the year in complete darkness, sessions with the snow falling outside and sessions where the sunshine heralded the coming of Spring. We've gone from barely being able to float on top of the water to following a routine and putting it to music and this is definitely something particularly satisfying. We've had a great deal of specialised help from Sue and all at CSC and I look forward to performing within the team.